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News and comments from Russia and the EU

Weekly column

It was Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who knows President Putin better than any other leader, who said that Putin ‘was living in a different world.’ The different world disease has now spread throughout the Russian bureaucracy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s assertion that there were no Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine was met with open laughter at last week’s Munich security conference. The Russian ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, met with a similar response when he told a recent meeting in Brussels that although there were no Russian troops in Ukraine ‘there may be some Russian volunteers’ fighting there.

According to the Kremlin’s propaganda machine it is the West to blame for the crisis; first by breaking promises about NATO enlargement; and second, by supporting the coup d’etat in Kiev that led to President Yanukovich fleeing the country. Russia, it is argued, has a historic right to ensure its own security and this means that Ukraine cannot simply decide on its own whether to join the EU or NATO.

The Russian argument goes further. The West encouraged Ukraine to break the Minsk cease-fire agreement; and turned a blind eye to the anti-Russian, neo-fascists in the government in Kiev. All this was regrettable and was having a harmful impact on EU-Russian relations. Meetings at all levels were frozen and trade was down 11% in 2014 compared to the previous year. Sanctions were harmful to the economies of the EU and Russia. South Stream had been cancelled. Other common energy projects were in danger. According to Chizhov there was ‘an anti-Russia frenzy in the Western media.’ He did not mention the constant diatribes against the EU and US in the Russian state-controlled media. »

Daily media round-up

Russia has been accused of harbouring a master cyber hacker who emptied American bank accounts of more than $100 million in one of the most sophisticated online frauds ever detected. The Kremlin is believed to have ignored a US request to arrest Evgeniy Bogachev, whom the FBI says is still at large in Russia despite being put on a list of “most wanted” cybercriminals last summer. »

Russia has signed an agreement with Cyprus to give Russian navy ships access to Cypriot ports. President Vladimir Putin agreed the deal after talks with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, which comes as tensions between Russia and western countries over the Ukrainian conflict continue. »

US army vehicles and British soldiers paraded through the streets of an Estonian city just 300 yards from the Russian border yesterday, in a display of western unity against the encroaching threat from Moscow. They were officially taking part in a military parade marking Estonia’s Independence Day, but the choice of location was deeply symbolic. »

Conflict in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s economic slowdown left the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) with losses on its investments in 2014, but it said it would continue to support the 34 countries in which it operates “in the face of persistent economic challenges.” »

Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, yesterday called for the urgent implementation of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement by Russia and the separatists, and brandished the threat of new sanctions. »